The Peabody Awards

Lost (ABC)

Lost is the ultimate castaway yarn, a romantic adventure that incorporates themes and notions from classic visionary literature — Wells’ The Time Machine, Verne‘s Mysterious Island — and philosophical ruminations worthy of Emerson, Locke and Sartre. It is also one wingding of a cliffhanger serial that has kept its fans scratching their heads and gripping their sofa cushions. From the beginning, its account of the survivors of Oceanic Air 815, a Sydney-to-LA flight that crashed on an uncharted island in the Pacific, has been unconventionally told. No one who walked away from the wreckage was exactly who he or she appeared to be. Each had a history which was teasingly unfurled in flashbacks. The island itself was even more surprising, forever presenting additional inhabitants, puzzling relics and strange creatures. There is likewise no end to the challenges presented to viewers, who have been required to follow the characters through flashes forward as well as back and to entertain ideas about time and space as well as age-old questions: Why are we here? What is our purpose? Is everything preordained or do we make our own destiny? For rewriting the rules of TV storytelling and creating a one-of-a-kind blend of melodrama and metaphysics, Lost receives a Peabody Award.